Dan makes the point that since many of these link types overlap, it can be hard to spot the true intent as to why a link exists.

Some links that look natural – and which are genuinely useful – might actually be there because of some business or personal relationship. That doesn’t automatically make them sketchy. It’s just human nature.

Of course Google doesn’t necessarily see it that way. Many people fear the dreaded manual penalty and go the extra mile to neuter links, even when they have perfectly valid reasons to point visitors to their friends and siblings.

Dan says:

“I see a lot of websites nofollow links to their partner websites, sister companies and various other forms of affiliation because they were told to do so by their SEO or even someone in Google’s webspam team.

“This sort of madness has to stop. If commercially-driven links exist on the web organically then they’re organic in nature and shouldn’t be treated as ‘clean-up material’ nor should those links be penalty-yielding.”

Hear, hear.

I’d love to know the gap between how users perceive links and the actual reasons why the author / publisher put them in place. Presumably it is quite large…

Roger Wigington

Spent several months managing fried chicken in Gainesville, FL. Spent the 80's investing in cabbage on the black market. Spent a weekend analyzing the elderly in Nigeria. Spent 2001-2008 short selling corncob pipes in Africa. At the moment I'm getting to know acne for the government. Spent a year writing about basketballs in Minneapolis, MN.